In a Globe article about the ICA, Ken Johnson wrote the following about the Foster Prize exhibit:

More complicated questions arise with an exhibition of nominees for the biennial ICA Artist Prize, now called the James and Audrey Foster Prize, which awards $25,000 to a promising Boston-area artist. This year’s four finalists, all women, are not impressive. Each is given her own sizable space, and all four shows look like MFA degree thesis exhibitions, as each artist offers several disconnected, mildly clever conceptual projects.

Sheila Gallagher creates pastiches of romantic landscape paintings using smoke and soot instead of paint, and she built into a gallery wall a large “painting” of clouds in the sky made entirely of live, variously colored flowers that are watered by a hidden irrigation system…

Pondering such earnest but routinely academic work, I wonder, can it be that there are not more ambitious, original, and daring artists working in the Boston area? If there are, the ICA needs to reconsider its nominating process.

Read the full article here (requires free registration).

Johnson’s review interests me because the Sheila Gallagher’s work (no relation) provoked the most positive reaction from ICA patrons.

Her wall of “variously colored flowers” is in the far corner of the exhibit, and as patrons rounded the corner and saw and smelled the fresh violet and blue flowers, they let out simple “ah”s of delight.

The smoke-formed waterfall paintings she created provoked interest as well – during her presentation she explained that she hung the canvas overhead and used candles to burn the image of the waterfalls into the cloth.  She even used custom-cut metal pieces to “draw” the sharp lines in the composition.

When asked why she didn’t just paint it, she explained that the contemporary artist’s choice of method and materials can be as important as the work produced.  The flyer that accompanies the Foster exhibit notes that her work is inspired by the “cloud of unknowing,” and so she chose to use materials that were physical (the cloth canvas) and impermanent (the smoke).

The “12 Frogs” blog enjoyed her exhibit as well.  Although a more trained eye may find the work “academic,” I think most people would find it uplifting.